What is a GIF Image? A Step-by-Step Guide About GIF Images

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What is a GIF? GIF stands for and is the abbreviation for Graphic Interchange Format. A GIF is a computer file that contains a still or moving image. Mostly you’ll see GIF images as moving images or short animations on the internet and on social media.

The creators of the file format are Bob Berry & Steve Wilhite at CompuServe in 1987. According to them, the acronym is pronounced like JIF, with a soft “g” sound. They made a joke about it saying “Choosy programmers choose GIF”, what does that remind you of? But the peanut butter commercials where “Choosy moms choose Jif.”

Search Engine for GIFs

It was in 2013 when Giphy came about as a search engine for GIF images. Giphy was founded by Alex Chung and Jace Cooke in February 2013. With Giphy you can explore and share the best established GIFs and most popular animated GIFs. Find Funny GIFs, Cute GIFs, Reaction GIFs and more.’

According to Giphy, “GIFs allow us to express ourselves and relate with others in a fun way.”

How to Make a GIF

Nowadays there are several ways you can make a GIF. You can either make a GIF using Photoshop or make a GIF directly from your iPhone. You can easily follow along our animated GIF tutorial when making a GIF in Photoshop. Or you can use these awesome apps to create GIF images using your iPhone. The choice is up to you and how creative you want to get when creating your very own animated GIF image.

Sharing GIFs

Sharing GIFs has been taking over the internet and social media for the past five years or so. You see them every where now on Facebook and Twitter. Not to mention you can upload GIFs as videos to use them on Instagram with a little tweaking.

How Does a GIF Work?

A GIF image works by adding animation to a still image or adding text to a small video clip. You can do this using frames in Photoshop and then saving your images as a GIF file.

There are two important pieces you need when creating a GIF image. Either an image or video and sound or text on your GIF image. However, most GIF images go without sound.

A GIF file contains a set of frames crammed into one file. GIF images have a lower visual quality than other image files. This allows for the frames to be stored in a GIF file wile keeping the file size relatively small.